


Sherry - When Good Squirrels Go Bad

by Tennyo



Series: Hunter Side Stories [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Gen, Season/Series 05, Set in Canon Universe, Zombies, bay area, mentions the books and events from the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tennyo/pseuds/Tennyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherry gets back from vacation to find that the Bay Area squirrel population is acting strangely.<br/>As the days progress, it seems this might require a group effort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherry - When Good Squirrels Go Bad

**Author's Note:**

> For: [Evilsquirre1](http://evilsquirre1.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Set during the events of episode 5.15, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid". The canon timing is either during the last week of February or the first week of March, so I adjusted.

Lounging on the Lido deck in the adult-only section of a cruise ship, in a black and silver striped bathing suit and green floral-patterned sarong, a full-figured woman with dark auburn hair drinks a Piña Colada. She’s deeply tanned from spending two weeks on this cruise, and exploring the islands of Hawaii. She looks over to her husband, who is hanging out in the hot tub, turning into a lobster.

It’s coming near the end of the month, and tomorrow they land in Los Angeles, then head back home. She waves over a cute young man with a serving tray to refresh her drink, and enjoys the view of tight white shorts over his firm rear as he heads to the bar. It’s been a relaxing two weeks, and she’s not looking forward to getting back to work. This includes her legitimate, tax paying job, as well as her secret one.

Ever since Lucifer got busted out of his cage last May, everyone who’s in the know, and some who can at least read the signs, have been waiting for the end of the world. But Sherry, the woman sunning herself on a cruise ship, is determined to try to have fun, and to keep to business as usual. Because you never know. It’s not the first time people have said the world was coming to an end, but then again, they’ve never before had a giant column of light that announced the rising of Lucifer on Earth.

Fuckin’ ANGELS. As if demons weren’t bad enough, there had to be angels, too. And not the cute chubby babies in diapers, either. No, apparently these guys want the Apocalypse just as bad as old Luci does, too. So Sherry does what she can, flipping both sides the finger, and gives as many hunters as she can a fighting chance. Of course, she has to deal with her “real” job, too.

She and her husband Mike co-own and run a legal service company, that mostly involves serving court papers and notary duties. But they do a whole host of other court-related things as well. It keeps the IRS off their backs, and a roof over their heads. But what she really enjoys doing is a bit less… legal. One could say Sherry is the local dispatch of sorts for hunters, helping research cases where supernatural creepy-crawlies pop up on the radar. But that’s not all she does.

Under Mike’s name, they run a hotel and sort of hunter’s supply depot. Her OCD and slightly paranoid tendencies make sure that they never show more money going in or out than they should, and they’re very careful to keep on the right side of the police. The last thing they need is to get caught with the substantial amount of slightly illegal and questionable paraphernalia that makes up her research library and weapons cache.

How does she manage to keep the books clean while trafficking with hunters? One good thing about owning a legal service company is that they also do investigative services. Sherry can run blackmail on rich scumbags that can afford to lose a couple million a year, and that goes to supply the growing network of hunters she helps with her skills.

A week before the cruise, she had done the research and headed the investigation that led to the takedown of a group of vampires in the Bay Area. They had been illegally trafficking people in and out of the country. Of course, what caught her attention was that they were sampling the merchandise. She sicced a seasoned group of hunters on them, and the area’s a little safer as a result.

Sherry stretches lazily, watching the people putter about, clueless to the world-changing events going on around them. She finishes her second piña colada, and goes to drag her husband out of the hot tub so they can get ready for dinner. This will be their last night of the cruise. Saving the world can wait one more day.

\- - -

The ship arrives in  L.A. in the morning, then they fly back to Oakland and pick up their car from long-term parking. Once they get to their home in the Hayward hills, they unpack and settle in to catch up on recent events. There’s the regular low-level of supernatural crap that’s been happening during their absence, and Sherry scans for whatever hasn’t been resolved. Mostly, the local stuff’s under control. There’s this one interesting story coming in about some place in the Midwest where the whole town went crazy right around Valentine’s Day. She’ll have to look at that one later.

The regular, local news has the typical things showing up. The pelicans are still mysteriously dying. The sea lions are still conspicuously absent.* There seems to be an increase of mangy, possibly rabid squirrels in the Bay area as well. Ugh, She hates squirrels. How can other people think they’re cute? They’re nothing but furry little menaces. And there are already reports of them getting violent. Looks like the little mangy critters are getting out of hand, and the animal control people should get on that soon.

\- - -

Monday starts out hectic as both Sherry and her husband catch up on two weeks worth of business. They’d been planning this vacation for a while, so they made sure to not pick up anything large before their departure. One of her co-workers asked if she saw anything cool during her trip, and she tells them about taking a hike up the side of a volcano. What she doesn’t mention, is that while they were at the top, she could have sworn she saw a man in a trenchcoat standing on the other side of the caldera. But when she took a second look, he was gone.

Sherry spends a good portion of her day rearranging her desk from where her assistant had been looking for something during her absence. While listening to the news that evening, Sherry catches a brief report about a homeless person getting swarmed by squirrels, and being bitten to death. That catches Sherry’s attention, because even though she hates the fluffy-tailed rodents, that is not normal behavior. This is more than a case of mange and rabies.

To be on the safe side, she sends out a notice to some locals who have worked with her before, to try and catch one. Local authorities aren’t saying one way or the other what’s causing this weird behavior, but she’ll be damned if crazy-ass squirrels are going to take over her town.

\- - -

It’s Tuesday morning when Sherry gets the message that one of the crazy squirrels has been caught, so she heads over to her hunter base at the hotel to try and figure out what’s going on. The squirrel is all crusty, missing large patches of fur, and really does act rabid, foaming at the mouth and acting vicious. While they’re studying it, she gets a call from a contact at local animal control. Squirrels that have been caught and tested are coming up negative for rabies. They don’t know what this is.

She looks down at the thrashing creature in its little cage, and shudders. Just to make sure, they do a range of tests, holy water, salt, silver, Even a short exorcism. Nothing seems to make a difference. Done with the chittering, nasty critter in the cage, she has someone take it out back and kill it.

By mid-day, there are more reports of squirrel attacks, and it’s happening all over the northeast Bay Area. This is some weird shit, and weird shit usually calls for hunters. After lunch, Sherry sends out an email report to all the locals on her hunter mass mail list, and says if they’re interested to show up at the Sea Lion Hotel tomorrow morning. When she heads home that evening, she makes sure that her doors are locked tight.

\- - -

It’s a rainy Wednesday morning, and there are a little over a half-dozen hunters waiting in the room used for meetings. Most of those gathered are pretty much retired from the life, and think this might be an easy job. One is a younger hunter, just a kid really, at eighteen. But that kid’s got potential outside of hunting, and she expects him to grow out of it once he discovers it’s not as exciting as he thinks it is. The last person to show is a local veterinarian that Sherry remembers well.

She remembers the day a couple of years ago when a werewolf was loose in San Francisco. The veterinarian, Nancy, ended up shooting it full of tranquilizers, thinking it was some kind of mutated coyote. The hunter that eventually shot the thing with silver bullets had brought the shaken woman to Sherry’s office, because she just couldn’t resolve what she’d seen with what she knew about physiology. Watching a hairy creature transform back into a human… The woman had been on the verge of a mental breakdown. Now, she comes in useful when they need a little off-books medical assistance. At first, she’d argued that her training was for animals, but after seeing the kind of damage a person could get with no way of explaining it without a LOT of police scrutiny, she was glad to help.

This could actually work out nicely. Sherry gets the vet to working on calling the animal control people in the surrounding cities to see how widespread this is, or if they’ve identified what’s causing it yet. Then, she pairs the kid up, his name is Tyler, with one of the more seasoned, ornery retirees named George, to go hunt down another crazy squirrel. The rest get sent out to monitor the situation and report their findings.

Now that everyone has set off with their tasks, Sherry gets on her computer and tries to figure out what the hell is going on. Is whatever it is contagious? If this goes on unchecked, there are sure to be more deaths. The news is reporting more and more squirrel bite victims, and people are beginning to freak out about rabies. Something about this seems familiar. _Hmmm_ …

She digs around in her bookcase and finds the Carver Edlund series, _Supernatural_. They’re terribly written, but the books are a pretty good record of the kind of weird shit hunters deal with regularly, and some that’s even more crazy, thanks to the very interesting lives of Sam and Dean Winchester. Yes, the Edlund books leave off their last names, but all it takes is some research on some very familiar incidents that coincide with events in the books. Besides, after the releasing of demons back in 2008, and then the Lucifer incident, the Winchester boys have a bit of a reputation within the hunter community, whether you’ve read the books or not. Those two are trouble on legs.

And thanks to some photographs she snagged from that Supernatural convention this past fall, she knows just how well shaped those legs are, too. It’s insane just how photogenic those boys are even in mugshots. Too pretty for their own good.

Sherry’s snapped out of her musings by the phone ringing, and it’s the vet, with an update. Nancy says the squirrel problem is all over Oakland and San Francisco, but incidents peter out just north of San Jose. There seems to be a radius of effect. The May-December hunting team bring in a fresh specimen for the vet to poke at, and Sherry goes with them to Nancy’s animal clinic. After about an hour of various tests, she honestly has no clue what this might be.

Sherry digs up the Carver Edlund book she found, and looks at the title, Croatoan. Remembering what the indicator was for the zombie-virus, she has Nancy look for signs of sulfur in the squirrel’s blood. It comes up negative. Well that’s a relief. An animal-borne version of _that_ would be devastating.

Not knowing what to do next, Sherry and the other hunters get ready to leave the clinic. Before she can reach for the door, Nancy calls out, “Wait!”

Sherry turns around, “What is it?”

“Umm... Ok this might sound a little off the wall, but this squirrel is necrotic.”

The older hunter speaks up, “Yeah, and that means?”

“The samples I took from it, it’s not living tissue. It’s rotting.”

Rotting? “Are you telling me the squirrel is dead?” asks Sherry.

Nancy points to the animal squirming in its restraints, “And still moving around.”

The kid hunter comes closer, interest in his eye. “So, what, it’s a zombie or something?”

“Is that a feasible possibility?” Nancy has learned enough by now, and asks without even a hint of derision. She is honestly asking if it’s possible that they have a zombie squirrel infestation.

Huh. Sherry thinks about it before replying, “Well, I’ve heard of revenants, but that requires someone to raise and control the body. Who would be amassing a zombie squirrel army?”

Plus, the ones that have been euthanized have stayed dead. She thinks. They really need to look into that. Sherry and Nancy talk for a while, but between them, neither can come up with a solution for what’s happening.

\- - -

By the end of the day, the squirrels are all the locals are talking about, and it’s getting freaky. They’re even talking about imposing a curfew if they can’t get the problem under control. Sherry goes to her car with her gun drawn, hoping she doesn’t have to shoot any of those little rodents. Their heads are too freaking tiny, so it’s hard to get a good, clean headshot. Plus, squirrels fight as a group. The thought makes her shudder.

When she gets home, she checks all the windows, makes sure the chimney flue is closed tight. She goes to the basement and makes sure there’s nowhere anything can get in down there, too. Then, just to be sure, she checks it all again. When Mike comes home, he laughs at her a little and she loses it.

“THIS IS NOT A JOKE. THERE ARE ZOMBIE FUCKING SQUIRRELS OUT THERE THAT WILL EAT OUR FACES OFF!”

Mike just laughs harder, and Sherry throws a book at him.

She finds she can’t sleep that night, listening for the sounds of tiny claws trying to get in. All the research she’s done, and there is no precedent for this kind of animal behavior. She has already reached out to every colleague she knows who might have a clue, and so far, nada.

When the sun rises, Sherry is asleep, face-down in an old dusty tome. Mike wakes her up with the smell of coffee and fills her largest mug. The news this morning is extra interesting. It seems squirrels swarmed a home, and someone tried to set them on fire. This resulted in a rash of surrounding house  fires caused by scurrying, flaming squirrels scattering in all directions. Those bushy tails make great torches, apparently. Sherry gets the shotguns.

She prefers the 20 gauge, and chooses some small bird shot. On the way to the car, she gets two of the little buggers, and runs over a third before she’s out of the driveway. Luckily, there don’t seem to be any around near the legal service office when she arrives. That changes when she heads out in the early afternoon to go to the hotel and regroup with the teams she’s got working on the problem. She sees three of the mangy buggers before getting to the car. Luckily, she’s wearing her steel-toed boots, because she has to play punt-the-rodent to make it to her car. Using the shotgun is risky in public areas. Don’t want to have to pay to repaint someone’s vehicle if her aim’s a little wide. Not to mention the police attention.

While the hotel looks relatively squirrel-free, she can see the splatters of blood here and there from where someone must have been using the rodents for target practice earlier. The group of hunters has grown to eleven since yesterday. They’re frustrated, some are injured (mostly with ankle bites), but one wound looks nasty where one of the little buggers attached to his ear after dropping out of a tree. The vet says whatever’s doing this doesn’t seem to be transmittable to humans, unless it’s extremely slow-acting. And they still have no concrete cause for why.

They're brainstorming, when someone asks if this might somehow be related to the other signs popping up related to the apocalypse. Well, that’s a good point. Has anyone heard from Bobby Singer lately? He’s usually in the middle of all this crap because of Sam and Dean. After some murmuring, the answer is no. As a matter of fact, he’s been conspicuously silent on the research front. When they call, there’s no answer. Huh. That’s not a good sign.

Maybe this is all Apocalypse related after all? Fucking Winchesters.

 

Someone reports that there’s a pattern emerging in the largest groupings of the infected squirrels. They tend to group together more in places that have the smell of meat, especially if it’s starting to go bad; they’ve been spotted at dumpsters by restaurants, and around butcher shops. And while the attack on the homeless person makes some sense in this light if it had been a while since they last bathed, what about the home where they ended up accidentally spreading fire?

“I think I can answer that one,” says one of the hunters that she worked with on the vampire case last month. “Turns out, they had a deep-freezer in the basement that stopped working, and all the meat stored there had spoiled. They were attracted to that.”

“What about the fish markets?”

They all check their notes, and apparently, squirrels don’t like seafood, but prefer red meat.  Finally they’re getting somewhere. But how does this help them? Sherry calls up Nancy the vet to discuss their new findings.

While they’re discussing the details, the young hunter, Tyler, starts humming a song under his breath. Eventually, he starts singing the chorus over and over again, something about milkshakes in a yard? Sherry is mid-sentence when she loses her train of thought thanks to him, and she snaps.

“Alright, that’s enough! Why do you keep singing that stupid song?!?”

Everyone turns to look at Tyler, and he shrinks under the scrutiny a bit. After a moment, he speaks up.

“What if we found a milkshake that would bring all the zombie squirrels to the yard?”

“We don’t have time for jokes right now kid,” one of the older hunters says.

“I didn’t mean a literal milkshake,” Tyler rolls his eyes, “but if they’re attracted to rotting meat, we just need to get better rotting meat. And a place to round them up.”

Everyone looks around for a moment. It’s actually a really good idea. Sure it has some technical difficulties to hammer out, but…

“Okay, people,” Sherry says, “How can we make a more attractive pile of rotting meat?” She gets out a pen and legal pad, and starts scribbling down ideas.

As evening approaches, in spite of the talk of rotting meat, people still gotta eat. However, most everyone decides that they _don’t_ want anything with meat. Even Sherry, whose normal order for a crowd like this would be a stack of meatlover’s pizzas, decides to go with something light.

Since it’s getting late, and many of the local hunters have families and normal jobs they have to get back to. Sherry decides to send them home, and asks all of them to keep thinking of ways to deal with this. After deciding it’s not worth the drive home, she stays at the hotel to continue her research.

\- - -

Sherry managed to fall asleep and wakes up at the hotel’s front desk, and it’s eerily quiet. Out of habit, she checks the phone line, still working. Then, she checks the sigils and devil’s traps discreetly inlaid into various surfaces at the entrance, all intact. But when she looks out the glass front door…

Squirrels. The parking lot is covered in fucking zombie squirrels. And the lights from the hotel are reflected in their beady little eyes, creating the eerie effect like she’s being stared at by the denizens of hell. As far as she’s concerned, she is.

Slowly backing up, Sherry reaches for her shotgun. Checking her rounds, she pumps the gun, and gets ready to fire as she slowly eases toward the door. But when she checks, all the squirrels are gone. Wait. How does a parking lot full of squirrels just vanish in the time it takes to grab a shotgun?

Sherry opens the door carefully and quietly. It’s only cracked a couple of inches, and she listens. But there’s nothing. Using the barrel of the shotgun, she pushes the door wider. And that’s when she hears it. Mad chittering, from all around. Suddenly, zombie squirrels are flooding through the doorway.

She fires until she’s out of shells, slowly making her way to the hallway. Just gotta make it to her saferoom. Using the butt of the gun like a golf club, she whacks undead squirrels away, as she nears the hallway. But as she turns to run, the hallway floor and walls are lined with waiting squirrels, their tails missing most of their hair, no fur left on most of them, and a fetid smell hits her nose.

 _SHIT_.

They attack, and Sherry backs into a corner, grabbing a broom handle, and knocking back as many as she can. Eventually they overwhelm her, and they swarm over her, chittering and gnashing their sharp front teeth. She can’t even scream, because if she opens her mouth, they’ll get in there, too.

“Mrs. Shallows?”

Sherry jerks awake, sitting at her desk in the office. One of the cleaning crew is wringing her hands, glancing at Sherry nervously.

“I… I’m okay, it was just a dream.” She runs a hand through her hair, “What can I do for you, Margaret?”

“You were making noises, so I came to check on you. Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, I just…” Sherry glances at the clock, and it’s a little after five a.m. “Thanks for waking me up, it was… a really weird dream.”

The other woman headed out of the office, and Sherry reclines in her chair, head titled back, with a sigh. Well, now that she’s awake, might as well as get something done. She goes and starts a pot of coffee, then wakes the computer on her desk to get some work done.

By sunrise, Sherry has gone through all her emails, has instructions for her employees for today’s work, and has gone through two and a half cups of coffee. But she’s still no closer to figuring out a reason for the damn zombie squirrels. What’s causing them to rise? Are healthy squirrels turning, or are dead squirrels coming back to life? They just don’t know enough. One good thing is that Animal Control has taken to trying to capture as many as they can, but they’re still _everywhere_.

When it’s time, she drags herself to the meeting room for another round of brainstorming. One thing the whole plan hinges around, is getting the animal control departments, or at least coordinated groups of hunters in each city to agree to this. First of all, they will need to obtain a large side of beef. Then, they need to locate a relatively empty area to let it… ferment for a while. Someone suggests the old Lorenzo theater, which has been abandoned for years, so that’s just about perfect. The balconies will be a great vantage point for them to pick off the rodents.

Several phone calls, a box of doughnuts, and a whole heck of a lot of detail nit-picking later, they pretty much have the whole plan laid out. They even have Nancy testing some chemicals to see if they can enhance the attractiveness of their meat on their test-squirrel at the vet’s office. They take a break and come back to hash out the idea some more.

In the afternoon, Sherry goes to the butcher’s for the side of beef. Unfortunately, she forgot a side of beef is literally half a cow. She has to call someone with a pickup truck to haul it to the site. They get it chained up in the center of the lower area, near where the old screen is missing, shredded ages ago. They also set up a couple of heaters to speed up the process, while others tape plastic over any windows or openings, to hold in the odor until it’s good and ripe. Now all they have to do is wait.

While they are prepping the site, one of the hunters gets a call, and has to leave. Whatever it is, it seems serious. After some phone calls, it turns out that his hunting partner ended up in a whole nest of the rodents on accident, and he got torn up pretty bad before he was able to get away. During the struggle, his femoral artery got nicked, and he almost bled out. This is a sobering reminder of just how serious all this is, even if it’s just squirrels.

\- - -

Sherry goes home for the evening, and decides that even though they’ve basically spent the whole day discussing decaying flesh, not to mention having to handle a huge side of beef that is meant to be freaking squirrel bait, her appetite for meat has returned, so she makes pasta with a three-meat sauce. And because she loves her husband, she doesn’t even tell him about their plan until _after_ he’s eaten. He gets a little green around the gills as she finishes the last of the garlic bread while talking about the hunter that almost didn’t make it.

Saturday is no day off when you are the support backbone for local hunters, and the day starts early with a trip to Nancy’s veterinary clinic. She explains that there are certain sulfurous compounds that rotting meat give off, and she thinks that she’s nailed a mix of diamines and dimethyl sulfides that seem to drive the caged zombie squirrel crazy. Or more crazy, anyway. They work out how to get a large supply of the chemicals she needs.

While running her errands, because she has a business to run as well, Sherry stops by the hospital to visit the hunter that almost died. Turns out he’s still in the ICU, his partner taking a break in the hall. She stops and chats with him a while, trying to keep him grounded.

Unfortunately, her phone keeps ringing, so she has to go and get back to coordinating a Bay Area-wide zombie squirrel roundup. The rest of the day is spent coordinating with other cities, making sure their plan is all set up to go. Not every major hub is on-board with the plan, or can implement it in time, so they have to get creative. That, and they’re recruiting any hunter who can make it to the area in time.

By noon on Sunday, the meat is rancid, and Sherry finds it hard to breathe as she checks the room. It’s going to get worse when they open up the jars of chemicals to make it smell more “enticing”. Luckily, everyone will be equipped with gas-masks. Time to get everyone on their marks to get this started.

When everything is in place and all the teams are ready, Sherry gives the signal. Here’s the plan: They have vehicles interspersed throughout town that will wind their way along routes designed to cover the most area. They all have their containers of foul smelling attractant, and they will let the odor trail behind them as they go. The squirrels will hopefully follow the scent to the building, and then go inside to feast on the side of beef. What awaits them is a group of hunters with shotguns to pick them off one by one, or in large groups.

Sherry’s at the Lorenzo, and they’ve just taken down all the plastic, and opened the lower theater exit doors wide. She’s placed herself in the projection room for now, above everything. Because if this works, it might start to look too much like that nightmare she had, a flood of undead squirrels. the on-site group tensely waits, hoping to hear reports that the critters have taken the bait.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes in, they get the first report of zombie followers. It’s another ten before the first vehicle arrives, and they rush to place the last of their attractant near the meat before standing guard. And here they come.

At first, it’s a trickle of the ugly little beasts, rushing upon the side of beef to get picked off individually. Reports start coming in from other sites, and San Francisco is running into trouble, because the city wouldn’t agree to the plan, and the cops are getting involved. Oakland has an old meat packing plant that they’re using, and while they’ve got good coordination, for whatever reason the squirrels aren’t taking the bait the way they should. Fremont’s a complete and utter clusterfuck, and if the person in charge survives this, Sherry’s going to make sure they roast.

Sherry’s own stronghold seems to be doing well, for now. As more vehicles arrive, the number of squirrels pouring in increases, and that’s when it starts to go wrong. They have a report of one of the trailing vehicles getting caught in a horde of squirrels following another car, only to have the creatures turn to them, and swarm. The last she heard was screaming before they lost contact. All they can hope for is a civilian to see what’s happening and call emergency services, because everyone on site is basically trapped until this is over.

Over time, the pile of small corpses escalates until there’s a mound of rotten squirrel a couple of feet high below the dangling beef. Everyone fires and reloads, boxes of ammunition at the ready, and towards sunset, the stream of squirrels lessens. Now they have more rotten squirrel meat than they did beef.

Before it’s completely dark, they pick off the last of the zombie squirrels that are going to come, and cleanup begins. A couple of small front-loaders scoop up the mess, and it all gets tossed into a shallow pit. As soon as they’ve gotten it all, the pit is doused with fuel and set alight. Large spotlights illuminate the area, as they make sure they didn’t miss any stragglers.

Eventually, everyone settles in around the fire, drinking beer. Tyler gets plenty of praise for his idea, and it’s looking like he might actually turn out to be a pretty good hunter. Too bad, because the life expectancy for one is way too short.

Speaking of short life expectancy, the reports from the other cities are… mixed. San Fran was a complete and total wash, and it looks like the city is going to try to blame the hunters in charge for any damages or disruption. Great. Oakland reports modest numbers, and they still don’t know why. Fremont lost quite a few good people to poor coordination and lack of leadership. This is what they get by letting non-hunters run an op.

And then there’s her own group. They couldn’t save the two-person team that got overwhelmed, and the only thing they can think that happened is they got turned around, lost their route. It’s the only way they could have ended up behind another vehicle like that. The reports dampen their mood, even though the Lorenzo team bagged the largest amount of kills.

It’s late by the time they get the smoldering pit covered back over with dirt, and Sherry’s eyes are itchy from the smoke. First thing she plans as soon as she gets home is to take a shower. How the hell will she get the smelly squirrel scent out of her hair?

\- - -

It takes a couple of days to pick off the last of the stragglers, and it turns out that in Oakland, apparently the gangs were helping take care of the squirrel population. That, and the zombies were migrating south for some reason, which led to the decreased numbers there, and the high turnout for Sherry’s site. As the numbers of affected squirrels decrease in San Fran and Fremont, there are no reports of any new outbreaks, and they hope the ordeal is over.

Sherry finally gets in touch with Bobby Singer, and that’s when she finds out about the situation in Sioux Falls, and the toll it took on everyone. Shit, those people had to deal with family members, even at least one child. She’s suddenly glad all they got was squirrels. Even Bobby is surprised that the squirrels were affected here, considering the whole thing was meant to warn Bobby off from helping Sam and Dean.

So… what? Basically Death, this cosmically powerful being, stubbed his toe on its way through the area and cursed the squirrels as an afterthought?   _Oops, oh well, it’s just some rodents. Besides, the world is ending anyway_. And of course there are actual physical incarnations of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Why wouldn’t there be? When Sherry hangs up from her call with Bobby Singer, she reclines in her chair, sighs heavily and closes her eyes.

_I need another vacation._

**Author's Note:**

> *During the winter of ‘09/10: in California, Brown Pelicans were noted to have some kind of film on their feathers, and they were dying off. Sea lions mysteriously disappeared from the Bay area for three months, upon which they began to return.  
> The squirrels, well, as far as I know, there were no reported incidents of mange or rabies among the Bay Area squirrel population at that time. So that’s all me. Well, that, and Sherry's dislike of squirrels.


End file.
